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“Chek Lap Kok,” he said, referring to the reclaimed island just north of Lantau Island, where Hong Kong International Airport was located. “Half hour. Hour. Not sure. Traffic?” He shrugged. “Hour, maybe.” He depressed the meter’s flag. “Tolls there and back. You pay.”
Mei-li responded in Cantonese, assuring the driver they understood it wouldn’t be cheap. They were more concerned with speed than cost...and his tip would reflect it.
They’d barely pulled away from the curb when Rafe called Mike, but his conversation was brief, just long enough to let the other man know they were following a slim lead and would be back before dark. “No,” he told Mike, “go ahead and have lunch. We’ll grab something to eat while we’re out. And if you’ve finished your interrogations, might not be a bad idea to head back to our hotel and catch a quick nap. Who knows what we might have to do tonight.”
Mei-li’s cell phone rang almost as soon as Rafe hung up, and she dug her phone out of her purse. “Wei?” She listened to her cousin on the other end speaking in Cantonese, then quickly relayed the information that they were no longer where he’d left them...in English. She would have said more, but she was conscious the cabdriver was listening, so she spoke in English, which the driver wouldn’t understand nearly as well as Cantonese, and kept her answers to a minimum. She ended the call and turned back to Dirk, saying, “That was Patrick.”
Dirk had donned his sunglasses when he’d first spoken with the cabdriver, but had removed them again once he was inside the cab. He held them in his hand, ready to put them back on at a moment’s notice. Now he cocked one eyebrow, as if asking for more details. Mei-li leaned toward him in intimate fashion, so the cabdriver couldn’t hear, and spoke sotto voce. “The sketch artist wasn’t a complete washout. He’ll scan and email copies of the sketches to me, but they’re pretty much meaningless at this point. It’s not that Vanessa’s descriptions were so vague, but all she really saw were their eyes. Masked like that, they could be anyone.”
“Which doesn’t help us at all.” Dirk’s answer was just as intimately given, with his lips almost pressed to her ear.
“Oh, but it does,” she reassured him softly. “If nothing else, it got Vanessa and Chet out of the way this morning. Patrick said they’re eating lunch now, then they’ll head to the hypnotist. He also said Vanessa is getting increasingly worried about the hypnotist. Chet is doing his best to calm her down, but—”
“It sounds more and more like she’s involved in the kidnapping,” Dirk said before Mei-li could. “And Chet, too.”
“Yes.” She watched a tangle of emotions play across Dirk’s face—anger, frustration, remorse. Anger that someone he trusted to keep his daughters safe would endanger them. Frustration that he couldn’t choke the truth out of them—assuming they really were involved—couldn’t force them to tell him what they knew, force them to tell him where his daughters were. Remorse? Mei-li wasn’t sure why Dirk felt remorseful, but she understood the anger and frustration. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
They were on Route 8 now, the major artery that went up the western tip of Tsim Sha Tsui, then hopscotched across smaller islands until it reached Lantau Island, the largest of the two hundred sixty-three islands in the Hong Kong SAR—larger even than Hong Kong Island itself.
Mei-li turned back to Dirk. “No,” she said softly, “I know it’s not my fault, but I...I empathize. When Sean was kidnapped...” She let her voice trail off.
Dirk’s hand squeezed hers, silently encouraging her to continue. She leaned closer, her voice barely above a whisper. “Sean’s family was appalled to learn his kidnapping was an inside job. A longtime family attorney—a man they’d trusted for years—had planned the whole thing. He’d been dipping into Sean’s trust fund to support his drug habit and saw this as the way to put the money back without anyone being the wiser. He never intended for Sean to die—that was the last thing he wanted. Not only because he knew Sean personally, and liked him, but because Sean’s death triggered an audit of his estate and the attorney’s malfeasance was uncovered. But when the payoff was botched, the two kidnappers he’d hired panicked. They killed Sean without consulting with the attorney and fled to Macau.”
She glanced away, staring out the window, biting her lip to get her emotions under control. Dirk still held her hand, though, and somehow this time comfort flowed from him to her...instead of the other way around.
